Pompeii by Robert Harris

Pompeii follows Mount Vesuvius’ eruption in 79 AD and the events immediately surrounding it. Robert Harris’ main character is aqueduct engineer Marcus Attilius who has been recently posted to the Bay of Naples following his predecessor’s mysterious disappearance.

The book begins just days before the eruption and we see our main character struggling gain the respect of his colleagues and managing the challenges of his new job. The plotline cleverly uses this engineer’s knowledge and experience to guide the reader through the warning signs of the eruption and the impact that it had on the Bay. Throughout the book we come across several characters both historical and fictional, this helps to create a very plausible book and helps to understand why the volcanic eruption had such a huge impact at the time.

One thing that was apparent from the start was that the author had done a large amount of research before writing. I visited Pompeii last year and through reading the novel I almost felt as if I were back walking through the streets once again.

The story worked hard to contain detailed accounts of both the explosion and the culture of the people living in the Bay of Naples at that time. Although this research is essential for this to be plausible, it is in my opinion one of its biggest downfalls. I love reading, yet I found the book quite hard going at times. It felt that you were wading through paragraphs of information and facts before you reached the storyline.

I almost think that this book was trying to do too much at once, it was balancing a love story, with the missing person plotline, whilst providing an account of the events from both a 21st centaury and a 1st centaury perspective. The result of this is that the characters are never fully developed and at times it is like reading a textbook account instead of a novel.

Overall I would say that this is a very well planned and thought out piece of writing. It would probably suit someone who is particularly interested in finding out more about this era. However, as I have said, the sheer volume of factual information contained often makes it feel that the tale of the characters is an afterthought.

There were some elements that I really enjoyed about this book, however I was surprised at how successful it had been. From what I can tell it has received good reviews from both readers and critics, it was readable but unlike many other novels, I wouldn’t choose to pick it up again.